


Id Est

by BlueEyedLookalike



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Flawed people, Gen, Immortality, Kai'Sa has Issues, Kassadin would know, Lux got new lore to factor in Galio just after I wrote this so rip me, Reconciliation, Void-typical body horror, denial is a river in egypt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueEyedLookalike/pseuds/BlueEyedLookalike
Summary: A collection of small stories for the champions; I'm open to suggestions on what to do next.1: Nasus walks the Shuriman Desert, alone and forgetful.2: Zed liked Shen much better before, when Shen was a smiling child.3: Kassadin receives a letter from the Prophet of the Void.4: Lux grows up in Demacia, a kingdom built from magic-nullifying walls.5: Kai'Sa falls into the Void when she's ten, and it never gets easier from there.6: Leona and Diana have hated each other for years, and now they cannot imagine living apart.





	1. Millennia

 

Long ago, centuries in the past, Nasus sent his younger brother letters. Renekton, the great warrior, and Nasus, the great strategist, had few occasions to meet one another in person, even once Ascended. Murals and stories always depicted them standing together, shoulder-to-shoulder, but the truth of the myth was that Nasus had forgotten his brother’s human face before they had Ascended and instead remembered him by his rough penmanship, his disjointed writing, and how the thick paper was scuffed and stained by his careless hand before someone else’s presented it to Nasus’. Throughout their long lives, they wrote to one another nigh daily, though the messages might take weeks to deliver on the harsh roads. Nasus indulged Renekton by hearing and advising on his constant petty squabbles and complaints of his “dispassionate, lazy” soldiers, and Renekton indulged Nasus by reading every detail of the new manuscripts Nasus had found and restraining the admonishment of his older brother to “You’ll go blind squinting away in those musty old libraries!” Renekton could not write well, but the feel of the letter alone could conjure up his brother in Nasus’ mind, that good-humored ruffian with sharp edges, the soul of him beneath his words, only for Nasus’ eyes.

The sun burns his eyes.

He blinks. He thinks it cruel that this land can hurt him after millennia of endurance, after the sun had already burnt through him and cast him anew in this canid form. The philosophies Nasus has read, and of those there have been too many to count, talk of the numbness of longevity, of the repetition of patterns and cues until it blends into one nothingness of existence. Perhaps, for others, this is so. For Nasus, pain clutches him as easy as it did when he was a child poking at his wounds to check their healing. His memory stores facts and ideas as if a library unto itself, while scenes and emotions blur until they are ghosts, sand slipping through his fingers. Of his mother, all he has left is her whisper of, “I’m so _proud_ of you,” with her hands on his cheeks. Of his father, a habit of pacing that lacks context, except to explain why Nasus keeps the opposing habit of consciously holding himself still. Shurima itself, his beloved home, lies lost to his mind. He could count the exact number of years, of _hours_ , that Shurima had fallen to dust, but Xerath’s look of twisted fury escaped him, the screams of the countless falling on his deaf ears. His brother . . . What had his brother looked like? What had been the green of his scales? Where were his scars? What had he said, what was the last thing he said? Nasus cannot remember.

The old pain of that recent, raw loss fades to be replaced by the new pain of rediscovering that loss over again. Nasus walks, alone, the sun unforgiving upon him, and he forgets what he grieves and how he grieved for it until it beats him down anew. Another cycle to endure within the greatest cycle of life and death. He cannot breathe for the pain of it, though this will pass. One day, he will remember none of it; instead, he will remember how he stumbled through the sands with pain in his heart and how he sat by the light of his spirit fire and wrote letters he could never deliver.

 

> _Dear brother,_
> 
> _The weather has cooled since Shurima fell to its sands. The difference is minimal but tangible – we have been forsaken. I doubt this comes as a surprise to you, as you’ve been locked inside death._

> _Dear brother,_
> 
> _What does one think of when entombed? I am convinced our thoughts must be similar. For beings as we are, our minds are eerily attuned to the music of death, aren’t they? The prevailing thought that life and death are distinct states bothers me more than ever before. You and I are testaments to the inbetween._

> _Dear brother,_
> 
> _Azir once wrote to tell me your requirements are too strict for the average soldier, and I could not help but laugh at the naïve boy. There is a reason your campaigns never fail, and it is not leniency._
> 
> _I am not sure why I speak of this now, of all times._

> _Dear brother,_
> 
> _Do you remember if mother sang melodies to us?_

 

He keeps them, as if a messenger will arrive shortly with Renekton’s reply. He tells himself that Renekton has left on long campaigns before, uncapable of contact for months. What are months to immortals? What are a necklace of centuries?

Too long. They do not blur under his fingertips. He feels every minute as he did when he was ten.

 

> _Renekton, my dear brother . . ._

> _My dear brother,_
> 
> _I—I am sorry._


	2. The Present

Shen was much more interesting as a child, in Zed’s opinion. Today’s Shen judges him with distant eyes, denounced him as twisted and broken after their tracking of Jhin, defied him after the shadows revealed Zed’s path to victory. Today’s Shen, with his calm, holier-than-thou nobility, accuses Zed of weakness, of breaking, of allowing power to alter his soul. But when Master Kusho brought a nine year old Zed into the temple, he was already bitter and grasping for tools to shield himself with; that boy had broken the day his parents died one after the other to a withering sickness, as he sat beside them to see their eyes glazed over – as Shen’s do when he is “centered” and “balanced,” a hollowed-out inhuman entity rather than a man.

For all their rivalries and Zed’s short temper, they had been in lock-step as children. Zed could punch Shen straight in the mouth and, rather than dodge, the fool would continue smiling while he took the hit, unfailing as the sun. “I might as well have punched a statue for all the sense you have,” Zed would say with a scowl.

Shen touched the blood on his lip and widened his eyes in mock surprise. “Zed, did you feel a breeze? I swore the wind was coming from the south last time I checked.”

Zed had to punch him again for that, but Shen would catch his fist and deliver his own blow, because they always had to end in a draw.

There were two Shens, according to Zed, as surely there were two Zeds, according to Shen, and both protest the duality proposed by the other. The multiplicity wears the veil thin when Zed contemplates it quietly enough, as if two events occur to him simultaneously. This phenomenon intensifies when the demon known as Khada Jhin begins performing again until each thought, each movement echoes inside his mind. Zed knows by the tension in Shen’s shoulders and the too-tight grip on his blade that time ripples for him as well, blurring.

They were seventeen when they began to track the faceless monstrosity, twenty-one when they finished.

(Twenty-six when Zed killed Shen’s father, thirty-three today, Zed sneering at Shen as they hunt the beast again.)

“I know why you hide your face,” says fifteen year old Shen with his sly smile.

“Finally imagine a sufficient insult?” Zed asks.

“Your face looks like a donkey whose head was crushed by a boulder. Too long, too flat, and your teeth and ears too crooked.”

“Try again. That’s not good enough to hurt my feelings.” Still, he kicks Shen in the back of the knee to see his balance wobble for a second.

“Damn.” The warmth in his eyes is almost unbearable, so Zed averts his gaze to the ground.

(“I know why you hide your face,” says thirty-three year old Shen with his piercing monotone.

“Finally realized you hide yours as well?” asks Zed, his rage tangible in the darkening of his shadows, how they coil slightly out of their natural shapes.

“You are ashamed of yourself. Looking at your own face in the mirror reminds you of all your mistakes and makes you remember your conscience, so you garb yourself in falsehoods.”

Unbidden, Zed’s shadow takes form behind the stoic, its blades poised at Shen’s exposed back, asking for permission. He could do it. Shen, lost in his self-righteousness, would not see it coming fast enough, despite his otherworldly perceptions. “No,” Zed says aloud. “You aim for me but your barbs are for yourself.” The shadow tilts its head. Motionless soundless wordless emotionless, it brands the image of Shen’s blood spilled into Zed’s mind until his vision blurs, as if Shen’s blood is his own. “I am in control,” he spits, imagined blood running from his lips. “I am no puppet to forces I cannot understand like you are.”

“You are damned.” Freljord, ice, the dead of night, void, dark stars – Shen radiates an inhospitable frigidity from his very spirit.)

Shen’s favorite meditation spot outside the temple is the bend in the nearby creek. This spot of moving water had a particularly soothing sound to its passing, the trees curled low in a leafy dome, a small community of marble-eyed frogs propogated there, and, Shen once confessed, it reminded the young apprentice of fond memories of his father and he playing in the water and naming the frogs when Shen was small, before Zed arrived. No matter the day or time of year, Zed knew that when Shen left without a word, nowhere to be found, he would be at this place of peace.

“Do I bother you here?” Zed asks, too quiet to pretend at confidence. At ten, self-defense is simple, feeling the energy in the air is simple, but his mind has never reached that complete calm Shen and Master Kusho luxuriate in. There’s always a piece of him looking over his shoulder in paranoia.

“Never,” Shen answers easily.

(Shen no longer meditates. He insists the strength of his center surpasses the need for it, so Zed conducts his contemplations within Shen’s sight. Their eyes meet for one glancing second as Zed strips off his blades, ensuring that Shen recognizes the opportunity to eliminate Zed every day, that Shen must be forced to think, _What is staying my hand?_ as Zed does, every day.

“My presence bothers you,” Zed states. The peak of complete, unruffled calm that took over a decade to discover stretches out like a flat mountain of feathers. Like a sea of rocks floating a temple. Like bending water reflecting the still image of a fire . . . No illusions, only complicated truths.

“Never,” Shen repeats from their long, long past, spitting out the two syllables with steel. It compels Zed to smile for reasons unfathomable.)

Sparring is the favorite part of their training. There’s a tantalizing promise that if they can defend themselves well enough, no one can force their will upon them. If they can fight, they are in control.

(Talking replaces all physicality between them. No clasping of hands, no pats on the back, no strikes to weak points – it’s too tempting for a blade to stray. They sit across from each other, Zed with his hidden sneers and Shen with his hidden scowls, and talk about bitterness.)

“Zed?” Shen calls.

(“What is it?”)

“I wanted to say I’m sorry. What you did was—

(—a disgrace. I will never forgive you for what you have done.”)

“I know.”

(“Do you?”)

“Why are you apologizing then? You’re not—

(—better than me, no matter how much you believe you are.”)

“I know.”

(“What?”)

There’s a lengthy pause. All the sound in the world ceases and reality sharpens as it never has before.

(“I know I am not perfect. It would hardly be objective to say otherwise,” Shen says. His mask is on, but his eyes are determined and fierce as Zed has never seen them.)

“I won’t apologize. I admit—

(—I was wrong, but I have no regrets. I cannot have them. But you’re still my—)

—closest friend,” Zed says, far too quiet.

(Equally quiet, Shen whispers, “Vengeance never balances. Our bitterness helps no one. I know—)

—you’ll never change,” Shen tells him fondly, smiling, “but—

(—neither will I. I want to rebuild.”)

Then it solidifies. Zed is thirty-three, and when he looks to the man across from him, he feels anger, pain, a knot of hatred deep in his throat; but he also sees, for the first time in decades, that child who laughed as he was punched. Slowly, Zed nods as the realization sinks into him. “All right.”

He holds out his hand.


	3. Gray

It begins with a letter that arrives to Kassadin on the literal breeze, alighting at his feet an hour into his morning’s travel. The paper is dark brown and rough, strangely heavy in his hand, rolled into a neat cylinder with a red ribbon tying it together. A whisper tugs on the edge of his mind, and, before he can linger, he rips the message in several concise tears and throws it away.

The hungry beast tainting his subconscious growls and strains at the controls of his hands to summon the paper once more. _HhhooOoMeeEEE_ , it cries. With practiced effort, Kassadin subdues the voice and walks on. Until another message floats to him, made of the same material and whispering the same call. The beast screams now, a high-strung demand ghosting across every muscle – he closes his eyes and destroys the vile thing again.

When the third message arrives, the urge supersedes his good sense and he unties the letter with trembling hands, the air seeming scorchingly hot even through his breathing apparatus:

 

> _The other two were blank. I know you too well. If your peers weren’t so moronic, they’d envy your virtues. Stubborness, self-control, strength, intelligence, an even temper, and I have not yet touched on your combat prowess. Or that engaging, beautiful gift that tempted you into opening this letter. You must look stunning in person, as you do in my Sight._
> 
> _Isn’t it time we met, my disparate match?_

 

The letter is unsigned, though it would have been superfluous. If it hadn’t already been stamped on the back of Kassadin’s eyelids, it would have been simple to deduce. _Malzahar_.

Since the prophet’s possession, Kassadin has felt him on the edges of his consciousness like a roaming spider, unassuming compared to the rampageous Voidborn but leaving a thin web behind, a trap, a library, a beacon, a single point of organization against a writhing mass of variables. Unbidden, despite the sheer breadth of the Void, he will hear the scattered afterimages of Malzahar’s thoughts. Clawing excitement. Cocksure certainty. The familiarity is – it is—

 _None of my concern_ , he reminds himself.

He walks the border of the Shuriman Desert, where more vulnerable life could live. Short, knobby trees give shade to scraggly yellow grass and thorny bushes, their leaves a pale, bleached green from the harsh sun. These hardy, stubborn plants that keep watch near the sand are Valoran’s only defense when the portal in Icathia breaks open to pour forth a horde rather than a handful of terrors. As fragile and insubstantial as they are, they protect the land better than he can, with his singular body that, despite his teleportation, can guard one stretch of land at a time. One at a time. Checking the back of his eyelids for the upset he awaits. One at a time. Counting the petals on the few brittle summer flowers. One at a time.

\--~*~--

The next letter arrives inconveniently during a meeting with a Noxian general. The broad-shouldered woman is already dull-eyed with disdain at receiving Kassadin and his warped voice, unconvinced by the mage’s warnings no matter how earnestly he phrases them. His bitter frustration mingles with the beast’s wailing resentment into a tangle of _you fFOOooLSsS think your pEetTTty wars are important when theyWweEEEE could DDdeSSstTTrROyY everything!_ The thoughts are easy to swallow. He has thought them and worse before; fleeting misgivings will not move him.

The whisper interrupts him midsentence. A moment after, he hears the skitter of bony insectoid limbs on the ceiling. He needs no words, no direct vision, to see the voidling courier and the dark brown scroll it clutches between its mandibles.

“What’s the matter?” the general snaps.

Kassadin pretends to adjust his mask. “Apologies,” he says. “My breathing apparatus malfunctioned for a moment.”

“You breathe with that horrid contraption?”

“Yes.”

The general curls her lip in disgust, the voidling drops the letter, and Kassadin tucks a hand behind his back, shifting the parchment into the Void and then into his hand. _Damn_ Malzahar, damn him to the silences of an eternity for intruding upon his work!

“Are you a cripple in addition to a monster?” the general presses, alert with suspicion as she scrutinizes his mask.

Kassadin clutches the letter tight in his fist. “As much as you might consider your Grand General a ‘cripple,’” he says, hoping the reference to Swain’s permanent limp will rob the woman of her condescending criticisms.

Her mouth falls agape in outrage. “You dare call the illustrious Grand General Swain a _cripple_ , after he has fought at the head of our armies? Defeated our previous General in a duel? You dishonorable imbecile!” When she lurches from her chair, drawing the longsword sheathed at her side, Kassadin sighs and warps himself back to the Shuriman border.

The letter says:

 

> _“ Sand whipped into our eyes, it’s_
> 
> _Like a rock through an unlatched window;_
> 
> _We are already open._
> 
> _Demigods of light, weavers of stone,_
> 
> _Creatures of crystal, centuries’ drought,_
> 
> _We can already See._
> 
> _Wisdom is in open palms—_
> 
> _Blood on the_
> 
> _Ground into dust_
> 
> _Carried on winds—_
> 
> _Allow the grains to drip through._
> 
> _The true drink of the soul. ”_
> 
>  
> 
> _Shuriman poetry is so simplistic. Wisdom is in open palms. Acquiescence, Kassadin. My mother read this to me every night before bed. She stroked my cheek and said, “Remember that, son. Fighting the truth never ends well.” You struggle every day. I should hate you for that. But how can I hate something so dear to myself? Perhaps you could tell me._
> 
> _Tomorrow._

\--~*~--

That night, Kassadin stares at the stars and does not sleep. They appear different than they did before his . . . transformation. As if a slithering thread curls between them, cutting them into neat patterns, not ones he learned as a child. The beast thrums with excitement and prods at Kassadin’s inert limbs, demanding movement. In the darkness, it is indistinguishable from himself. Every feeling is natural, every impulse understandable, all sense of wrongness drowned in the core-deep assurance of completeness.

Malzahar – _Malzahar!_ – that damned prophet. How he envies the bastard. Perhaps that isn’t the, well, of _course_ it’s the right word. Envy. A celebrity since his birth, the off-kilter Shuriman boy who babbled prophecies faster than a buzzing mosquito, filling the land with the cynical hope that if they could see destruction awaiting them, they could prepare for it, unlike the one before. Then a year ago, two, some measly amount of time, instead of savior, he stumbles to Icathia in a grasping, disoriented fervor and finds the voices in Kassadin’s head. Instead of horror, he found glee. The world had already carved him up with its weights and expectations that it took no effort to dissemble and reassemble him into a new vessel. Had he ever been human, truly? Oh, how Kassadin envies him. The air in Kassadin’s lungs burns until he chokes, as they did not in his youth. There’s an edge of hunger to every movement, constantly pushing away starvation. _They_ carved through blood and marrow and left a raw, empty space. Blue skin, yellow eyes, gasping lungs. And more power than he had wielded in his entire life.

At the first peek of dawn, the rays of the sun wedging a spike between his two halves, _no_ , no no no no, he has nothing in common with that abomination. He sucks in a tight breath and stands. He smooths his thoughts still.

“You’re a fool,” Malzahar says.

“You’re early,” Kassadin replies, not looking at him, not yet. He fiddles with the power source to his mask, checking the connections and wiping away the sand in the corners before slipping it onto his back. The dawn is bright and difficult to gaze straight upon.

“I said tomorrow, didn’t I? It’s tomorrow. You knew.” The calm, aloof tone of his letters was a farce. This man’s voice drips petulance and superiority, inhuman in its metallic echo.

Kassadin straps the usual blade to his arm and allows a shallow nod. “I suppose I did.”

“Look at me,” Malzahar demands.

With a sigh, he does. The prophet is as he was always described to be. Skinny limbs covered by loose clothing, skin tanned dark like many Shurimans, soft and rounded features hidden by a scarf pulled up to the bridge of his nose, and his eyes, renowned for their haunting pale blue before, now burning brighter than two candles in the dim light, pupiless. He floats a few inches above the ground, eyebrows knitted, arms crossed, like an animated figurine or a storybook character. No edges on him to cut yourself on, so unrealistic as to be without threat. _Ridiculous_ , the beast hisses in scorned anger. _TthHHiiIS is my opponent?_

“More human than you, I would say.” Malzahar’s mouth stretches into a wide smile behind his scarf and lands on the ground. If not for the eyes, any passerby would mistake him for a young man lost in the dunes, consulting with a faceless beast in a horned helmet. “Isn’t that funny, my half?” He throws his head back and belts out a laugh, then stares back with a mix of mirth and ill humor.

Kassadin grits his teeth and shakes his head. “I’m not your match or your half,” he says, because he cannot deny the rest.

Fickle, the prophet scowls and then his expression smooths altogether, the blue flaring brighter. “You are,” he says, with a certainty that makes Kassadin’s hands shake. “It’s why we were made this way. Everything that is also isn’t. You talk of balance, don’t you?”

“The Void is not balance,” Kassadin insists. Behind him, the sun grows in strength as it rises, the fiery rays glinting off the sand and reflecting on Malzahar’s skin and clothes with a tremulous shimmer. It caresses his cheek, the breeze ruffling his scarf softly, bathing him in its affection.

“Valoran has existed by itself for centuries. It is finally time for that that isn’t.” He smiles again, manic, and leans closer, as if to drown him in his light. “I don’t believe in balance. I am not so close-minded. The more harsh the disparities, the more identical the souls.” He laughs and points at Kassadin’s mask. “I know how you look under that disguise.” The voice drops, that familiar whisper in Kassadin’s ears, until it is almost inaudible. “You’re a _monster_.”

Kassadin growls like a wounded animal and, wreathed in the sickly purple glow of the Void, stabs Malzahar in the stomach and sends him flying away. “Never more monstrous than you!”

Malzahar laughs.

When Kassadin warps from the scene, breathing hard with rage yet clutching at his chest as an emptiness deforms him from the inside out, the image remains seared in his mind. Malzahar, blood on his lips, fallen yet crowing in victory, sprawled like a debauched prince awaiting a feast. Pure joy.

He compartmentalizes it. He stores it in a box in the back of his mind and never dares to acknowledge its existence. His failed diplomacy calls to him, his rounds circling the desert, staring at the night sky, watching the backs of his eyelids, hearing whispers. Routine, determination, a strength he’s shored in every muscle, every bone, to withstand. He listens. It keeps him up at night – he is never kept up at night. And breathes in scorching air.


	4. Walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the middle of writing another one of these stories, I read Galio's new lore, thought of Lux, and wrote this within a few hours. Imagining Lux in a more 3D sense gives me lifeblood. Hope you enjoy <3
> 
> (Edit: And then a week later, Lux and all the Demacians got a general lore update. If you keep up with the updated lore like I do, I hope you enjoy my take on Lux anyway.)

When Lux is seven, she and her family depart from Demacia’s capital for a diplomatic meeting in one of the nearby sister cities. Garen is stiff-backed and jumpy, as their father keeps a steady eye on him. Their mother is asleep hours before dusk, exhausted after her late night preparations for the trip, too distrustful of servants to allow them to handle it themselves. Their destination is a day and a half by carriage, and as it grows darker and darker, Lux creeps closer and closer to the window, eyes bugged in concern. If they were home, getting ready for bedtime, Garen would be making fun of her and calling her a scaredy cat and a crybaby, which always made her feel at least a little bit better, knowing someone thought it was silly to be afraid. But Garen has only spoken in monosyllables and tense glances since their father’s speech about the importance of Garen’s behavior on this visit, how it was the foundation of his future career. Ten is a good age to start setting the serious expectations, their father insisted. An early start is a better one, period.

No one says a word as the sun sinks, devoured by the horizon line. Lux fixates on the shadows growing in the countryside they pass, the clumps hiding under trees and grass, clinging to the divots in rocks, the very air dimming like the life is being sucked out of it, leaving Void.

Suddenly, she feels safe.

“What the?” Garen says.

“Luxanna!” their father shouts, grabbing her arm and waking his wife in the process.

Lux is already wriggling away, used to shrugging off her father. “What? I’m not–” Then she sees it. The bracelet she’s wearing, the silver one with the Crownguard crest engraved on it, is glowing a pure, cheerful white light. As soon as her eyes set upon it, she knows what it is. An empty, closed-off piece of her alights and warms her chest. That’s _her_. _She_ is doing that.

Three pairs of eyes stare at her in shock, and she can’t help smiling so wide her cheeks hurt.

\--~*~--

Five miles from the petricite walls of the city, the light fades. Lux grabs the bracelet and presses her fingers into the metal. She can do it, she can, she forces every speck of her energy into the dull jewelry, she grasps it hard enough for the clasp to break, and – nothing.

She cries. Her mother’s soothing does not stop her. Her father’s booming command to cease does not stop her. Garen curls in upon himself and covers his ears as her sobs break into wails.

Over the years, many will ask her how it feels. Those who ask this are the typical Demacian citizen, unacquainted with magic and fiercely wary of it, as it reminds of them of Noxian trickery and the unknown dangers lurking outside the walls.

Lux plays dumb and asks, “How does what feel?”

“Not having your powers when you’re here, Lady Crownguard.”

“Like it always does,” she answers with a grin. She answers with such positivity they forget the ambiguity. “This is my home.”

Many will also ask her how she can stand it. These are the Noxians, the Shurimans, the Ionians, the Freljords, those from the Isles, all the little pieces of the world where magic isn’t a strange or dangerous thing but a convenience, an everyday occurrence, an art.

Lux plays dumb and asks, “How can I stand what?”

They are always unimpressed, always pitying. “You know what I meant.”

“It might seem strange to you, but Demacia is my home,” she answers with a grin.

They persevere, usually, press for a deeper answer, but Lux deflects. In this way, even when she doesn’t have light at her fingertips, she feels connected to it. She has learned to create illusions with words, reflect what others want to see from her, direct conversations to her favor with simple manipulations, as versatile as the light spectrum.

She’s never told anyone the whole truth except for Garen when she is fifteen and he is eighteen and about to leave for his first campaign. Standing on the ledge of her balcony, she points at the Colossus standing with his back to the city, gigantic wings spread in a golden glow. “Do you know how it feels?” she whispers brokenly. She wants to scream, sob, wail, as she did when she was seven. She is afraid, now.

Garen looks at his younger sister. She sees words form and die on his lips as he searches for the perfect reply, or, as the moments drag on, anything better than his eventual, shameful, “No.”

“It’s like not being able to breathe,” she tells him, clutching her throat that is thick with tears. “It’s like being locked in a box that’s too small for you. It’s like being constantly sick and weak. It’s like knowing your heart is beating but not being able to feel it. It’s like drowning at the bottom of the ocean, alone, in the dark . . .” She sucks in a tight breath, light-headed. Acknowledging this to the open air is almost too much. “ _Drowning_ ,” she repeats.

Silent, Garen takes her shaking hand and pulls her down from the ledge, wrapping his arms around her in a strong hug that she returns with desperation. His throat works as if he is about to apologize or quote one of his beloved war idols about endurance in the face of adversity, but he tightens his arms instead as Lux babbles and gasps herself hoarse.

When he leaves the next morning, Lux smiles and wishes him well and assures him she’ll be fine, because of course she will be, silly. Though she doesn’t feel it now, she knows she will.

\--~*~--

Lux cannot help despising the Colossus, Galio. As a small child, she looked at it with the same awe as the rest of her country, but each year after discovering her powers, she has become increasingly resentful of the symbol of the emptiness in her chest. The emptiness that drives her to find the bright side twice as hard than if it came naturally, the emptiness that tempts her to dwell on her uselessness, others’ judgements, and the nauseating cruelty surrounding her, but which she forces herself to overcome every day. To wake up to the sun and focus on its beauty rather than her futile longing for it.

Galio causes this pain with a smile and legends of noble protection. The irony of the Demacian protector fills her with anger. When she is fourteen, and she’s learned how to outsmart the Crownguard estate’s personal guard, she begins an annual tradition of slipping outside the Demacian walls and standing before the unspeakably large statue to air out her ills with him.

“I’ve heard the stories about how magic affects you. You absorb so much you come alive for a while.” She tilts her head back to look into his black eyes. “I believe it. Magic is an amazing thing. And you take it away, you keep it for yourself, you sit there smiling. Do you think I’m funny? A little Demacian noble whining about how her life is so hard? Well, screw you, you useless rock! I hate this, and I hate you! You care about everyone except for _me_.”

She laughs at her rants on the way home, how her protests to an unmoving stone make her sound tiny and petulant. It’s a dual catharsis; on one hand, she expresses frustrations she hides from everyone else, and on the other she trivializes those frustrations so they don’t feel like insurmountable burdens. She feels lighter for months afterwards.

“I swear, the only things you dislike are the dark and that stupid statue,” Garen says, chuckling when she flips off said distant statue obligingly.

“The dark doesn’t scare me. I’m not a little kid anymore. Meanie.” She sticks out her tongue at him for good measure, which makes him smile again.

“But the statue can fuck off?”

“Galio can flap himself right off a cliff and into a million pieces for all I care.” She attempts to say it with murderous intent, stone-faced, but one look in Garen’s direction and they both crack up.

\--~*~--

“She’s not adopted, you say? Are you sure your wife didn’t—”

Lux’s father cuts him off, his voice sharp enough to draw blood. “No, and I would appreciate if would refrain from inane gossip in front of my daughter.”

Lux grows up cast in suspicion, imagined as a wolf in sheep’s clothing by both Demacia at large and the magical people she is acquainted with, including the magical tutors her parents hire. The first she had when she was seven constantly shook when within the influence of the petricite walls. “I am numb, utterly numb,” she told Lux when the small girl furrowed her brow in concern. “It’s astonishing you can stand to live here without succumbing to insanity, though I suppose you have been conditioned to it.” In a whisper, she continued. “You don’t deserve to be tortured this way, child.”

After the kidnapping, when Lux is brought safely home, the witch is beheaded for her crime. Though Lux hides her face in her mother’s dress, the imagined violence haunts her for years. The incident makes her more a public spectacle than before, and people flinch when they hear her name. They gaze at her sideways, hunch in defensive positions, and repeat their grand Demacian mantra: _Magic can’t be trusted. Magic-users are criminals waiting to happen, dams waiting to break, poisons waiting to catalyze. Magic can’t be trusted_. Lux can never forget. She sits in the family library and inspires herself with the great achievements of Demacia, discusses with her brother excitedly about some military victory or some ingenious law. She reads about Galio, springing to life and smashing their enemies into the ground. But under breastbone is the visceral reminder that in many circles, _she_ is the enemy. The fact she cannot sleep some nights, because the white petricite walls seem to lower and lower and lower until they choke the air from her lungs, is the reminder her kind are not welcome here. When she helps a homeless old man buy food and warm blankets, he grins with his rough-faced, weary charm and thanks her by pressing a petricite necklace into her hands and wishes her safety from evil. She learns to smile through the offense she takes. She has to. She will not scowl. She will not take offense. She will not grow bitter. She will not nurture hatred in her heart. She will not hate her beautiful, beloved, magnificent, noble homeland. She will not become the monster they expect of her.

When Lux is twenty-two and Garen is twenty-five and back from a disappointing stalemate with Noxus, he turns his tired eyes to his sister in disbelief. “You, a monster? Lux, forget me. One day _you’re_ going to be the hero Demacians cheer for centuries.” He holds a hand up to stall her protest. “Hear me out. I lead battles. I keep the status quo. I do the same thing any military general might do. But you? You’re the special one.” He nods, matter-of-fact and confident, and retires for bed, leaving Lux to gape at his back.

\--~*~--

Debate after debate, squabble over squabble, Jarvan IV convinces his best generals and spymasters to send Luxanna Crownguard to Noxus for reconaissance and surveillance of the Noxian High Command, possibly the most dangerous and delicate assignment to be handed to any Demacian. Garen looks smug, Jarvan radiant with approval. Lux is giddy with nerves, excitement and fear both. (What will it be like, she wonders, to live for so long with her powers at hand? Doubts swirl in her head – will she truly want to come back after experiencing that?) When at last the preparations are done, her cover acquired, her accent hidden, her goals clear, she leaves Demacia’s capital, townspeople left and right nodding and smiling and wishing her, “a good day, Lady Crownguard!” Despite the walls, she’s almost sure she’s glowing.

She pauses then, on the road outside the city, to look up at the Colossus. She’s twenty-six. She didn’t visit Galio last year to berate him. It suddenly felt wrong to berate something that had never intentionally caused her suffering, merely existed in touchless benevolence. An old fear lingers in how she focuses too long on his canines or the sharp edges of his wings, but she can almost see past it to the visage the others must see, the invincible hero haloed in light. There’s a glint in his hollow eyes she doesn’t remember, his head tilted down at an angle she isn’t familiar with, his encouraging grin a smidge wider. It’s only a moment, a second, she pauses to think these thoughts, and then turns towards the road again. She must have imagined it. Just a trick of the light.


	5. Voidling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was angry that Kai'Sa was meant to be a desperate survivor of the Void and all we got was a pretty girl in a skintight suit. Here's my delivery of what her life would be like, warts and all

“Kaisa,” croons a soft voice, deep like the sound of a strong water current. “Are you dying, Kaisa?”

Her hands shake so hard she cannot move them, lying on some sickly glowing purple stone with her hands fixed into trembling claws before her eyes. Her blood looks purple. She whispers, her lips fluttering, sounds mumbling out, intakes of breath and quick puffs of fear.

“Look at me, darling,” the voice coaxes.

“Daddy!” The scream rips at her throat – oh, oh, one of them must have crawled into her mouth, scratching bleeding marks as it moves, blocking air, she can’t _breathe_ —

“Shh, darling. You must be quiet. I am here.”

She sees him now. He kneels at the entrance of the alcove she’s jammed herself into, exactly as she remembers. A scar cuts down his cheek and skates over his neck, his cheekbones overprominent, his eyes clear brown without reflecting the harsh light, his shoulders thick and broad, his skin tanned, pockmarks on his cheeks, a divot taken out of the back of his left hand. Her father, her hero, her knight, the magical Kassadin, whose name she bears. His ragged, sand-scraped armor still clings to his arms and chest, his hood down as if he has just arrived home with a story.

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday,” he says. “How old are you now?”

“T-ten.” It doesn’t form right in her mouth, her tongue too thick, that thing in her throat that makes noise is gone.

“A big girl now!” She flinches at his exclamation, and his eyes soften. When he speaks again, it is a whisper once more. “You could do my job better than me I bet. You’re brave and smart, braver and smarter than me.”

“Momma,” she sobs, her mind skipping over images like crude etchings held up to the light and then dropped into shadow. Momma’s face—the ground opening like a maw—an angular jaw—a lone patch of a starlit sky—teeth.

“Shh, darling. You will be all right. I need you to stand up for me.”

“Hurts.” Was that a sound? Did it crawl out of her mouth? She didn’t hear anything but the blood in her ears. Somehow he cuts through it all.

“I know, but you must stand. You cannot survive if you cannot move.”

Her hands are slick and tacky, won’t move right. Her legs are clumsy, won’t support her. She moves anyway, even when her vision goes blurry and it seems like her father has disappeared. She moves.

The voice breathes at her ear, fading fast. “Hide under the cliffs and wait, wait until one is dead. Make it your own. _Move_.

“I love you. Keep that in your heart, Kaisa. No matter what, I love you.”

She turns and he is gone. Her chest is so hollow she cannot cry for him.

\--~~+~~--

She forgets the lilt of Shuriman, of _Kassa-din_ and _A-zir_. She forgets articles and adjectives and the simple words for corn and sand and camel. She forgets how the throat purrs over vowels. The Void knows no such excess. It cackles and screeches and scrapes and bellows and roars. _CHO’GATH. KHA’ZIX. REK’SAI._ She learns how to scream back _KAI’SA._

Her second skin (her true skin) nibbles at her fingers in pleasure when she takes to murmuring it. Kai’Sa. Kai’SaKai’SaKai’SaKai’SaKai’SaKai’SaKai’Sa until it’s everything in her head, until it replaces sand and warm hands and sunlight and smooth skin and she is nothing but it, but the aggressive click of the K, the cry of the AI, the hiss of the S, the piercing note of the A. The leering, toothsome jaws of her fellows grin at her in approval, and the Voidlings stab their little stake legs into an armored ankle, an elbow, the soft flesh of a cheek, and then scuttle off without further fuss. She is apart of them, hungry and yearning and violent. Her second skin, in its excitement, will prickle her to the point of bleeding, eating at the tips of her fingers. It hates when her breasts and hips begin growing, not expecting to accommodate her in those directions, and it eats at her in petty vengeance, as if she were growing this way to defy it. She cannot feel them now, less so than the dead spots on the junction between her neck and shoulder, her elbows, her hands, her feet.

A monster with barbed teeth rips through the skin, down to her irksome fleshy second skin (her first one?) and after its skull has been liquefied, she props her leg on its corpse to examine the wound. Her skin needles it curiously, chidingly, and she pushes the little sharpnesses away to examine the purple-red blood slowing from gushing to oozing. She will need to hide and let it scab over. Moving will still be painful after, but when is it not? Moving always hurts. She’s run for miles on a broken ankle and she will do so again. As she pulls away, letting her true skin’s feeling needles poke at the edges, she pauses. Her second skin looks uneven in the purple glow. She wipes away blood and holds it closer to a curling purple tendril. She cannot feel with it with her fingers but yes, there it is: skin she once thought smooth is rough-looking, cracked in places, almost hilly.

“Have you done this?” she asks her hand chitin-skinned hand with its claws longer than her fingers might be. Her voice is nothing, a hiss and scrape, a clicking of teeth and a curled lip to show intent.

The helmet lovingly pricks at her scalp, tugging on the scraps of hair lingering there.

\--~~+~~--

When they attempt to break through to the surface where the light is too bright, she leaps in front of them and snarls, shoulder pods flaring, the spines recently sprouted on her legs rising. She doesn’t wear the helmet; they respect her moving twisting features more than that unflinching mask.

“ _KAI’SA_ ,” she screams, teaching them what it means. That’s _mine_ , she says. That is not _yours_. Some fall in line to her might, Voidlings cowering under her glare, but some are too strong, too stupid, too hungry to care. So she kills them.

A flat, scuttling creature with a jaw longer than its body slithers through a crack and breaks into the scorching sunlight of Shurima, and she scrambles after it, blasting the hole big enough to leap through and then shooting after the insufferable insect. After she’s jumped on its back and blown its head off, she registers the shrill, panicked crying. She turns, expecting another monster to have followed her, even if the sound is too pure, too clean.

A man has collapsed into the hot sand, untouched, frozen but shaking.

She gasps, stumbling forward to clutch his arms, and he shouts yells whimpers. Here it is, the last word she has left in her: “Daddy?”

He kicks her stomach, but it’s weak and she barely feels it. Did she pronounce it wrong? “Daddy,” she repeats. A memory curls warm around her of a kind man with her eyes who embraced her, not to crush but to comfort.

“You’re a monster!” he says. “Get away from me!”

The language awakens in her like a dream of white clouds and an open horizon. “Village swallowed up, Daddy. Momma died. How long?”

“Let me go, let me go, let me go, freak, leave me alone, go back, go die, stay away—”

Her eyes focus suddenly in the too bright light and she looks at the man wriggling under her hands. A beard. Sharp nose. Sunken eyes. Blue eyes. Oh. She releases his arm, and he runs, clutching it as if it were broken. She looks around her and cannot stop flinching. She does not feel any safer in this alien place than in the Void. The quiet is eerie. The sun hurts. Her skin dislikes the sand. She crawls back and collapses the entrance.

She returns, again and again, to save this or that soul, to discipline this or that creature that thought they could defy her, and it goes much the same. She can’t see properly in this place, and her heart always soars when she sees one of their tall pudgy figures, thinking it is him, her hero, her faraway protector, but then her gaze sharpens and it is a scrappy woman, a fat man, another crying victim.

Once she finds a pool of water after chasing a quarry for two miles over the dunes. She drinks greedily, swallowing great mouthfuls. She catches her own eye as she sits back and stares.

Her hair is short and patchy, her scalp scabbed over some places, a deep scar parting it unnaturally, and all of it is dark brown and limp. At her forehead and cheeks, where the helmet grips her tight when she pulls it on, there are deep purple carvings corrupting the flesh, pulling it unnaturally taut. If she poked at them, she might feel bone underneath. An old scar has split her bottom lip in half, revealing garish black gums and yellow teeth streaked through with purple veins. Her skin is uneven, rough, and cracked like everywhere else on her body and sickly pale. She reminds herself of her true skin, the black carapace that crushes her tight and protects her. But it is the eyes that wrench something inside her. Her eyes are pure yellow, glowing even in the light. They are blank, the irises and pupils and scleras carved out and replaced, the brown of her father stabbed out, as if the Void were cackling, digging its claws in deeper, screeching, _YOU’RE MINE, KAI’SA._ Her unfeeling hands begin shaking.

\--~~+~~--

Talking to them is useless, so she doesn’t. Kai’Sa, the daughter of the Void, learns a few things as the years crawl by.

It never gets easier. The stronger she gets, the stronger they get. The more she saves them, the more they curse her. The longer she lives, the more she hurts, despite her body growing more and more numb.

It never gets easier. Their faces keep his face fresh in her mind. No matter how many times she faces the sun of her youth, it blinds her like the first time. Breaking a limb hurts the same. The food she scarfs down is as foul as it was years ago.

It never gets easier. People used to say, “It gets easier.” It doesn’t. Who told that awful lie, and who believed it?

It never gets easier.

It will never get easier.

\--~~+~~--

She doesn’t recognize him when they meet in the Void.

For a few years now, she’s heard the whispers of the Prophet, Malzahar, echoing down the empty caverns of the Void, but she has paid him no mind. She could do nothing against an army of his magnitude and settled for her skirmishes, her fleeting protections.

She has heard about this one, too, a blind, armored fool who had decided taking a dip into the Void was a fine activity. He was searching for something, something he yearned for. She had no business opposing or accommodating suicidal fools. He becomes corrupted quickly, as they all do, but he has enough tenacity to use it to his advantage. When his blade fills with energy, he sends it out in pulses, and when his enemies leap too close, he teleports away, often behind them to deliver a killing blow. It makes him no less a fool to be wandering in this desolate hell for something surely already lost.

Then he sees her and calls out, begins teleporting closer. She allows it. A prickle under both her skins tells her this is important. What can it hurt? He could not touch her if he tried. The fool’s movements are frantic, his usually calculated movements sloppy. The clanging of his armor is unpleasant.

Finally, they are face-to-face, Kai’Sa leaning away instinctually, out of the reach of the blade strapped to his arm. And then he says it.

“Kaisa. Is that you, darling?”

Her skin bites into her so suddenly and fiercely she knows it has drawn blood from ankle to collarbone. It is almost easy to ignore as her old dream comes rushing back. Filtered and wrong, this is the voice that rings through her head whenever she thinks she cannot go on. _Move_. It belongs to the face that haunts her whenever she wanders the sands. His eyes are yellow, shining through his mask.

She says nothing.

“I’ve been looking for you so long, darling. I’m so sorry, I’m so damn sorry it took me so long to find you. I haven’t thought of anything else for years. Darling, are you all right? You’re bleeding.” His blue hands reach out, almost cradling her face. Her skin’s dug into the place by her ears and blood trickles down, looking purple, she’s sure, in the light, as it always does. He hesitates there, not touching, the featureless mask staring into her, and then her skin brushes hers and she breaks.

She sobs, loud and echoing, and flings her arms around him. She’s ten again, young and innocent and unblemished while he comforts her, not knowing how to go on. Now here he is, down in the scum with her, broken and awful like her, the metal of his armor icy against her cheek when she presses it there, the deep current of his voice warping with an unnatural timbre, his skin rough and too cold. Just like her.

“Let’s go, Kaisa. Darling, let’s leave this place.”

She freezes.

“No,” she whispers, hoarse and raspy.

“I can take us away wherever we want. We can get you out of that awful thing—”

“ _No_ ,” she whispers more fiercely. Her skin pricks her in approval, raw over the wounds it drew minutes ago.

Her hero, her knight, her father pulls away and looks into her face with the carvings and the yellow eyes. “We can go,” he whispers back. “We never have to see this place again.”

“NO!” She squirms in his hold, his arms restricting, holding on, wanting to keep her.

“What’s wrong?” he soothes, his grip tight. “What’s wrong, darling? You don’t have to do this anymore. You can heal, you can rest.”

Rest? _Rest?_ When he taught her the only way to survive was to move, to keep going, to never stop, not for anything? Not for hurts, not for exhaustion, not for desire, not for _fondness_. There is no life for her in that idle world above with the people who cry when they see her face and call her a monster. She doesn’t _want_ a life there in the awful sun. This is where she belongs. Her shoulder pods flare to life and target him, blasting him away. He staggers, clapping a hand to his neck, his purple blood gushing out.

“ _THIS IS MY HOME_ ,” she screams. She advances on him, flaring with power and rage.

He stares, not blinking behind his mask, stunned.

“ _YOU’RE NOT MY FATHER!”_ Power screeches from her, barrelling towards him.

He teleports a step away, his feet edging backwards. He extends a hand. “Kaisa,” he whispers.

“ _I AM KAI’SA!_ ”

A blast catches him in the mask, punching a hole clean through. His eyes are wide and scared, wide and hopeful, as yellow and bright as the Shuriman sun.

She charges a blast in her glove and aims it directly at him. “ _I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THE VOID!_ ” She fires it off. He disappears, still with his hand extended, begging her to come with him.

She collapses, her skin almost humming with delight.


	6. Eclipse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for MapleGriffin, who asked for Leona & Diana a year ago. I've had about half of this written for about a year and in one fell swoop finished it, hoorah!

☀ /\ ☽

They aren’t so dissimilar, the two of them, Leona and Diana. They eye each other from across the rocky clearing and remind themselves both of how they last saw one another – blood and anger and betrayal – and what has changed since then. They know what the other has seen, for each had seen it for themselves. Now, the decision, their blades gripped in their hands: reconciliation or recrimination?

It is no choice at all. They lay down their blades and sit together on the slopes of Mount Targon.

 

 

☀

Leona sheathed her sword and wiped her brow. She bowed her head, recited a short prayer, and thanked her opponent, as was tradition, although he could not respond in kind due to his incapacitation, eyes closed in unconsciousness and broadaxe imbedded in the ground fifteen feet from his outstretched hand. Her fellow warriors-in-training cheered for her victory, and she allowed herself to tilt her head back and feel the burn of the sun on her overheated face before she removed her helmet and knelt in front of Klofos, her personal mentor and the man who had found her among the Rakkor.

“Impressive beyond expectations, as always,” he praised.

“I endeavor to perform better next time, elder,” Leona said, her jaw set and her fist clenched as if she had been scolded.

Klofos smiled and set his strong hand on her shoulder. “You continue to be as unwavering and true as the sun.”

Behind them came a snicker, and the warmth in Leona’s heart instantly flared into an angry blaze. “Who dares mock the elder?” she shouted as she sprang to her feet.

The small crowd turned towards a figure sitting under the only speck of shade in the training arena, a gnarled, solitary tree nestled at the edge of the courtyard. It was a test, Leona knew, a temptation for the weak who could not stand to bask in the sun’s full gaze, and she had been proud to never have succumbed to it, proud to have never seen one of her peers succumb. This grinning, sable-haired girl seemed unbothered by her failure of such a rudimentary challenge, and Leona’s lips already began to curl into a snarl when she noticed the girl’s pale skin, as if she had hidden herself away from sunlight in fear. “Answer me!” Leona barked in impatience.

“Calm,” the girl said, pressing her lips together to smother another laugh. “I meant no offence. I merely – the metaphor doesn’t work, you see.”

“What metaphor?” Leona ground out between her gritted teeth.

The girl deepened her voice in imitation of Elder Klofos. “‘You continue to be as unwavering and true as the sun.’ That’s not true, is it? The sun leaves and gives us night every day, and it can be blocked by the clouds so we cannot enjoy its warmth on our skin. It isn’t nearly as steadfast as the elder implies, so the sentiment—” Her words abruptly halted, replaced by a yelp of pain, as the harsh backhand from Leona’s gauntlet struck her cheek.

Rage stole the warrior’s breath, forced her words to be puffed out in whispered outrage, her vision tunneled with glee on the girl’s bloody cheek, torn mouth, fearful eyes, arm braced on the ground, chest heaving with brimming tears. “Do not ever.” Leona sucked in a tight breath, restraining the urge to hit the heretic again. “Do not _ever_ speak like that again, or I will mete out your punishment.”

The girl stared up, refusing her tears to fall.

“Your name?” Leona asked.

Finally, the girl relented, and her head hung low. “Diana,” she answered.

Leona would not forget this name.

 

 

☽

Diana is startled from her meditation by Leona waking from a nightmare with a scream. Within a moment, Diana has leapt to the Solari warrior’s side and taken Leona’s face in her pale hands. Leona, alight with defensive power, burns her palms, but she holds on resolutely, until at last Leona’s eyes focus and recognize the face hovering above her. She sobs, “Diana, what have I done?”

“Nothing.”

Leona thrashes her head back and forth in denial. “I have, I-I have—”

“Shh, sunlight.”

And Leona shakes her head and buries her face in Diana’s stomach and cries. The darkness could not have helped, as moonlight could not comfort the Solari in the slightest, as the sunlight had never sheltered the Lunari. Nonetheless, Diana runs her fingers through Leona’s hair and shushes and whispers to her until at long, long last, she quiets.

“You have always been very loud,” Diana jokes softly.

“And you have always talked too much,” Leona hiccups as she rolls onto her back to stare at the star-drenched sky, a tiny insincere smile forced onto her lips.

Through numb touch and night blindness, Diana feels through her pack for bandages and a poultice for her burns while the other woman gathers her anger under her breastbone like an approaching solar flare. The night pauses in patient silence to receive her, its white eye passive in its observation, the wisdom of stillness and acceptance. The ever-present Aspect encircling and weaving through Diana’s mind hums in approval at her thoughts. Snatches of silver-edged images, a wax and wane, a subtle vibration that harmonizes with the edges of her powers; wordless praise.

Leona sits up with force, looking not to Diana but the moon. “You should have killed me along with the elders. You said you never meant to, that you want to take it back, but we were fools. You should’ve struck while the iron was hot and given the rest of us our fate for our ignorance. I have done too much wrong. Do you hear me? I am too flawed. You must see that.”

“The sun disagrees,” Diana replies, “and so do I. I killed innocents on a petty whim, whereas you have always killed with purpose and righteousness. You reminded me of my flaws often enough at the temple.”

“I reprimanded you out of prejudice and misplaced hatred. I killed people under a false, unnecessary regime. How can you compare the blood on my hands to yours? I knelt to evil, and you smote it. Look at your hands! I continue to injure you, my only sister in a sea of fiends. I am unworthy.”

There is no trace of self-deprecation or self-pity in Leona’s words, her certainty solid like a mountain and delivered with a conviction that steals Diana’s breath as if the words are reflected back on her, like how the sun’s rays reflect off the moon to give it its own glow. Given a thousand years, Diana would never muster such unshakable convictions, and her admiration for the other woman fuels a smile. “We are both mortal and both unworthy. A good pair.”

The fight remains in Leona’s expression, each feature limned in the delicate touch of moonlight. Her lips downturn and half-part in preparation for another tirade, but she tilts her head down, and the darkness extinguishes the fire there. The day is the time for life and for reaching hopes, and the night is the time for dreams and, yes, for nightmares. Diana watches, silent, and after lengthy inner debate she presses her shoulder to the Solari’s. Tonight is not the night for fervent revelry, lasting declarations, or silly and adventurous fumblings, but a mourning vigil for the everything that has been lost. When dawn breaks and they are too exhausted for anxiety, they will celebrate the everything they have gained in its stead.

 

 

☀

Leona kept close tabs on Diana. An orphan, taken in at birth rather than earning her way through discipline. Fourteen to Leona’s eighteen, proficient with a sword but unwieldy with shields, more interested in reading in the library or exploring the forest than training. Questions, questions, always questions, everyone said the girl asked too many questions. Leona did not bother masking her watching, and often the two would lock eyes across crowds, Leona ever-scowling and Diana smiling or raising an eyebrow or staring back in cold blankness. No one protested, so Leona continued unencumbered.

She approached Elder Klofos to switch training groups, which he allowed with a knowing smile after he inquired whether Leona might miss her friends in her original group and Leona reassured him her duty was to serve the order, not concern herself with selfish connections. “And you are only eighteen?” Klofos wondered aloud. “Truly wise beyond your years.” Klofos seemed intent on testing her pride with his constant compliments, and she nodded grimly in return, reminding herself she was on the proper path but not at the summit.

Awed murmurs surrounded her when she arrived to the first session with her new group. Her reputation preceded her, chiding any from speaking to her directly or meeting her gaze, except for Diana. “Am I that fascinating?” the pale girl asked.

“I volunteer for the first duel, and I challenge Diana as my opponent,” Leona said, looking to the elder overseeing the group.

The elder sighed and nodded her assent.

For being four years her junior, Diana fought well. It infuriated Leona that this imposter of a Solari could deflect her sword and dodge around her with a fleet-footedness she could not hope to match with her heavy armor. Leona defeated her with a shield bash that caught the younger girl in the face, causing her to reflexively drop her sword and clutch her nose, and Leona knocked her to the ground, Leona’s sword pointed at Diana’s throat. Leona’s lips twisted into a triumphant snarl of a smile, and she stared down at Diana, the girl’s face hard and blank but her eyes piercing with icy fury.

“Again!” Leona demanded.

 

 

☽

“In the old days, they would have called us the Dawn and the Dusk. The Radiant Dawn of the Solari and the Solemn Dusk of the Lunari, the two warriors that worked side-by-side to benefit both. They traveled together, they ate together, they fought together, and often they died together.” Diana looks into the flames of their fire, lingering over its flickering inconsistency, while Leona stares deep into its heart where it is steady and strong.

She sees them in her mind’s eye, images drifting up from that mysterious well inside her: a lithe woman bedecked in gold dancing around a smirking dark-armored woman; a tall, hook-nosed woman with eyes as wide as full moons dodging a playful shove from a short, squat woman with a bright sunburn blooming across her face like a nervous blush; a woman wielding her sword like a deadly mirror, blinding her foes before cutting them down back-to-back with a woman throwing down smoke bombs to create an artificial night only she could see in; twins, one with hair like the night sky, the other’s a brilliant white blonde, who clasped hands while watching the sun set, the moon rise. Leona and Diana’s sisters-in-arms, passed away and forgotten by all but the Aspect.

“Imagine it,” Leona says, her unwavering tone almost a command but her face soft, ruminative. “Imagine us.”

“No need for that. Are we not already following in their form?” A faint curve pulls at Diana’s mouth.

Rather than an immediate harsh rebuttal, Leona’s brows furrow, an intense gaze on the fire. “We can do better.”

Diana holds up her sickle sword and it flares with wispy silver energy. “But we will never be the gods who hold us up.”

Leona casts an annoyed glance at the Lunari. “That would be blasphemous.”

“I agree,” Diana says, stowing her sickle with a satisfied smile.

 

 

☀

No one talked to the heretic but rather talked _about_ her. In the years of Leona’s sharpened focus on her, burning like a ray focused through a magnifying glass, Diana sat alone at meals, in the courtyard, in the library, during festivals and training sessions. Her isolation gave Leona warm pleasure like the touch of the sun in winter. Good! May the wretch remain friendless and lonely for her stubbornness and ignorance.

None of Leona’s taunts or beatings on the practice field affected the girl. She still strutted about, pale and utterly unfreckled, wandering through the shade, and avid for the sunset. She grew up wiry and fragile-boned, and they gave up teaching her how to use a shield. At least they did not trust her to carry their banner afar and fight in their name, for Leona was blinded with the wrongness of it. No, Diana trained with her sickle and read in the library and walked their halls light-footed and alone. And Leona was viciously glad.

When Diana approached her, twenty-four to Leona’s twenty-eight, Leona still saw her as a wilting fourteen-year-old, disregarding the decade that had past completely for, truly, what had changed? Her shoulders remained slumped and weak, her gaze remained inconsistent as it flickered around Leona’s face.

“What do you want from me, moonchild?” Leona hissed.

“I am amazed you must use your sword at all, considering how sharply you wield your words,” Diana said.

Leona glared, her face hard and unmoving.

Diana nodded peaceably and said, “You’re a heartless bitch.”

Sneering, Leona shot back, “You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, eclipse-watcher.”

“You’re a horrid person, the worst kind of zealot with no care for anyone but yourself. You’re a crude fool who has never thought critically in her life. It is no wonder you are lonely here with only the elders and your adoring fans willing to speak with you. You’re mean-spirited, cruel, hateful—”

“And you’re a _coward_!” Leona shouted, grabbing her shield from her back and her sword from its sheathe and attempting to bash Diana’s nose in.

The heretic leaped back, drawing her short sword. “Look at you!” she spat. “All you know how to do is fight! You’re pathetic.”

“I’m strong.” Leona charged forward and then feinted to the side, swiping her sword low at Diana’s legs, but she dodged away with frustrating quickness.

“You have no idea what being strong is.” She slid away from another sword strike and she dipped down to Leona’s legs out from under her, but the Solari was too sturdy and she danced backwards. “You think it’s being immovable, you think it’s not needing anyone, you think it’s putting others in their place, you think it’s being never knocked down.” She deflected a stab from Leona’s broadsword with a flick of her shortsword, metal screeching against one another. She parried another weak stab, cutting in closer for a swipe of her own, and Leona bashed her shield into her shoulder. When Diana stumbled and fell to her knees, Leona kicked her chest so she lay spread on the ground, her sword knocked away and her chest heaving.

Leona leaned down, alight with triumph. “What were you saying?” she mocked.

“You’re a fool,” Diana snarled. Lightning quick, her leg reared back and kicked her better straight in the face, a sickening _crunch_ causing Leona to cry out in pain.

That night, Diana disappeared, and Leona thought, as she nursed her broken nose, _Good riddance_.

 

 

☽

Deep in the night, Diana wakes to Leona’s calloused fingers on her cheek, wiping away tears. She can see the outline of the sun warrior’s face but no more. The sun warrior’s touch is gentle, and it awakens that long-ago stunted feeling in her heart, and she begins to cry in earnest.

“Moonchild,” she murmurs, “you are the best of us.”

When they fought the Solari for the first time after their defection, Leona froze. She wanted it to be easy, it should have been easy, knowing the corruption and the lies. But it wasn’t, a feeling Diana was intimately acquainted with. Diana watched and protected her, and when the Solari lay dead around them, Diana fell to her knees and comforted her through the grief more painful than any sword. Bitterly, she said it must be easy for Diana, for whom it was always obvious her place was not among them, and Diana looked sadly into her eyes. She had wanted to be apart of them so much it hurt, and they rebuffed her for her oddity, shamed her for her differences. Yet she had clung, yet she had hoped.

“Nightblossom,” she says, tracing the moon warrior’s crinkled brow as she cries, “you outshine the sun.”

Sometimes, Diana is calm and looks back on that cruel Leona of old with an eye of acceptance. What is past is past, and it has brought them here. She strives for this calm meditativeness, a comforting objectivity. However, sometimes she looks back and sees nothing but a monster, feels nothing but anger. They could have walked shoulder-to-shoulder their whole lives if not for Leona’s contempt! She could have saved Diana from years of agony if she had extended the hand of friendship rather than a backhand and a denunciation. But asking her to act differently would have tempered that fierce flame that Diana loves so dearly, which keeps their feet moving, which keeps their spirit determined and bright. Diana loves her, for better or for worse.

“Moonlight, you have saved us all.”

Diana clutches Leona’s hands and shakes her head. “ _We_ will save us, all of them.”

Leona nods and gathers Diana close in her arms, and thus they fall asleep.

 

 

☀ /\ ☽

They came together, hurting and hurt, Leona and Diana. They sat upon a patch of fresh spring grass and stared into the horizon, silence between them. Even with their mutual knowledge, they asked themselves, _How will we fight together? How will we trust one another? Can two mortals erase ten years of hatred?_ Under their skin, their Aspects murmured together in answer, _You were made for each other_.


End file.
